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Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to examine a potential cognitive mechanism for simultaneous processing of age, race, and gender schemas. Marcus and Fritzsche (2014) propose that the outcome of the tripartite relationship of age, race, and sex are associated with archetypes, and that these archetypes categorize different intersections uniquely. To facilitate this, age groups selected were “old” and “young”, race groups selected were “Black” and “White”, and sex/gender groups selected were “female” and “male”. Several photographs representing each intersection were selected from LinkedIn for use in the pilot study, which were rated via a survey measuring the target’s stereotype, and the items included were chosen with the intent of selecting archetypal pictures for the main study that were the relatively equivalent across several dimensions. The main study used the selected photographs to address perceptions of participants (n=84) regarding adjectives used to represent each of the eight archetype conditions. Results suggest partial support for the proposed archetype theory, but the study faced limitations with respects to the photographs used in the main study. Inconsistencies with the literature suggest that the archetypes may been measured improperly, were conceived incorrectly, or do not exist. However, this study serves as a step towards understanding the complex relationship between a person’s age, race, and sex.